urge parliamentary scrutiny of the state within a state of the Khakis, especially the dreaded spy agency (DGFI). The interference of the Khakis into state politics will once again jeopardize institutionalization of elective democracy, good governance and secularism. The rogues fear social justice activists, critics, politicians and journalists too - Joy Manush!

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Bangladesh is divided over justice for victims of past massacres

SHASHI THAROOR

The sea of humanity besieging the Shahbag
area in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, for the last two months, has had an
unusual demand – unusual, at least, when it comes to the Indian subcontinent. The
demonstrators have been clamoring for justice for the victims of the genocidal
massacres of 1971 that led to the former East Pakistan’s secession from Pakistan.

The demonstrations have been spontaneous, disorganized
and chaotic, but also impassioned and remarkably peaceful. Many of the several
thousand demonstrators at Shahbag are too young to have had any personal
experience of the killings that marked the Pakistani army’s brutal, and
ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to suppress the fledgling independence
movement. But they are animated by an ideal – the profound conviction that
complicity in mass murder should not go unpunished, and that justice is
essential for Bangladeshi society’s four-decade-old wounds to heal fully.

What is curious about this development is
that the subcontinent has preferred to forget the injustices that have scarred
its recent history. A million people lost their lives in the savagery of the
subcontinent’s partition into India
and Pakistan,
and 13 million more were displaced, most of them forcibly. But not one person
was ever charged with a crime, much less tried and punished.

An estimated million more were massacred in
Bangladesh
in 1971, and only this year have some of the perpetrators’ local allies been
tried. Almost every year, somewhere on the subcontinent, riots, often
politically instigated, claim dozens – sometimes hundreds and occasionally
thousands – of lives in the name of religion, sect, or ethnicity. Again, investigations
are conducted and reports are written, but no one is ever brought before the
bar of justice.

To paraphrase the Soviet leader Joseph
Stalin: The intentional killing of one person is murder, but that of a hundred,
a thousand, or a million is merely a grim statistic.

The idealism of Bangladesh’s young demonstrators, however,
points to a new development. The outpouring of emotion evident at Shahbag was
provoked by a decision of an international criminal tribunal convened by the
government. The tribunal, which tries cases of war crimes and crimes against
humanity, found a prominent member of Bangladesh’s largest Islamist political
party, Jamaat-e-Islami, guilty of complicity in the killings of 300 people, but
gave him a relatively light sentence of 15 years in prison (prosecutors had
sought the death penalty).

By demanding severe punishment for those
guilty of war crimes – not the Pakistani Army, long gone, but their local
collaborators in groups such as Jamaat-e-Islami, Al-Badar, Al-Shams and the
Razakar irregulars – the protesters are also implicitly describing the society
in which they wish to live: secular, pluralist and democratic.

These words are enshrined in Bangladesh’s
constitution, which simultaneously declares the republic to be an Islamic state.
While some see no contradiction, the fact that many of the collaborators who
killed secular and pro-democracy Bengalis in 1971 claimed to be doing so in the
name of Islam points to an evident tension.

If any proof of this clash of values were
needed, it came in the form of a counter-demonstration against the Shahbag
movement led by activists of the fundamentalist Islamic movement Hifazat-e-Islam,
which occupied the capital’s Motijheel area. Unlike the Shahbag events, the
counter demonstration was well-planned and organized, and conveyed the stark
message that there was an alternative point of view in this overwhelmingly
Muslim country.

The bearded, skull-cap-wearing protesters
shouted in unison their agreement with speakers who denounced the International
Crimes Tribunal. Their supporters include activists of the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami-Bangladesh,
which has fought alongside the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

The debate between religious fundamentalism
and secular democracy is not a new one on the subcontinent. But the issue of
justice for the crimes of 1971 has brought the divide into sharp relief. The Shahbag
protesters reject Islamic extremists’ influence in Bangladesh, and even call for
organizations like Jamaat-e-Islami to be banned, while Hifazat-e-Islam and its
supporters want the country’s liberal forces repressed, secularist bloggers
arrested, and strict Islamism imposed on Bangladeshi society.

The young people at Shahbag are mainly
urban, educated and middle class; Hifazat derives its support mainly from the
rural poor. Traditional versus modern, urban versus rural, intellectuals versus
the peasantry: these divisions are the stuff of political cliche. But, all too
often, cliches become established because they are true.

The Bangladeshi government’s sympathies are
closer to the Shahbag protesters than to the Hifazat counter-demonstrators. But
it must navigate a difficult path, because both points of view have significant
public support. The authorities have even taken steps to appease the Islamists
by arresting four bloggers for their posts. But the government remains resolute
in its support for the international tribunal.

The irony is that true religion is never
incompatible with justice. But when justice is sought for the crimes of those
who claim to be acting in the name of religion, the terms of the debate change.
The issue then becomes one that has been avoided in Bangladesh for too long: whether
claiming to act according to the requirements of piety provides an exemption
for murder.

The outcome of the standoff in Dhaka should
provide an answer in Bangladesh,
and its implications could reverberate far and wide.

First published in the print edition of The Daily Star, Lebanon, April 23, 2013

Shashi Tharoor is India’s minister of state for human
resource development. His most recent book is “Pax Indica: India and the
World of the 21st Century.”